In my experience as a team building facilitator talking almost daily with small business to multinationals, the top five outcomes sought from team building programs are fun, effective communication, trust, collaboration and adapting to change.

1. Fun

Team building activities help people get to know each other in a fun, social and non-work environment.

They help to boost morale, build relationships and ultimately contribute to a positive workplace culture.

What team building does is strip away the hierarchy that exists within the office so all team members are on a ‘level playing field’ with each other in a positive and fun environment. This provides everyone the opportunity to step up, interact and lead.

Some of our most popular team building programs focused on fun and relationship-building are City Scramble, CCTV Music Awards, Fugitive and Minute To Win It.

2. Effective communication

Being able to communicate in the most effective way is critical for any role within a team.

What I mean by effective communication is making sure the message you are trying to get across is concise and understood.

Poor communication can be disastrous in any organisation and this is usually the precursor to an ineffective team.

All of our corporate team building programs practice various communication techniques.

It’s important that you outline to your team building provider in your corporate events planning period any specific communication problems to address so the right activities can be included that are focused on these outcomes.

For example, we have an activity called Secret Message which requires participants to transmit a message without using any form of written or verbal communication. This activity highlights the importance of being accurate and concise in delivering messages to teams.

3. Trust

Appreciating the importance of trust goes a long way to creating a healthy and successful team.

A lack of trust in any organisation can lead to self-doubt, low productivity, lack of team cohesion and low morale. It can spread quickly and be toxic for any team, department or the entire organisation.

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” Ernest Hemingway

Seeing this come to life in a team or corporate training activity is great to understand and appreciate the value of trust especially in problem solving situations.

Doing team activities that pose problems outside the workplace will show how the team reacts and uses trust in each other to find solutions.

Team building programs where trust plays a big part are Risk Reward, Safe Crack and Mission Impossible.

4. Collaboration

Having the ability to collaborate to achieve a goal is a priority but a challenge for most teams.

Creating an environment of collaboration using different settings and different people will showcase how challenging it can be. It will also highlight how important it can be to achieve the end result.

The best way maximise collaboration in a team activity is for the group to work in their normal teams but require them to collaborate with other teams to complete a challenge.

This will help the teams adapt to different situations and collaborate with different people to ultimately achieve a desired outcome.

Some of the best team building programs for collaboration are our charity options, such as Bikes For Tykes, Formula One Kart and Flat Pack Frenzy, where teams work individually and then together to support a community or charity in need.

5. Adapting to change

We live and work in a world of constant change. It’s those that embrace change that remain viable highlighting the importance of teams to adapt.

Teams are comprised of individuals – some may not like change as they like routine and others will go 100 miles to make change as they like stimulation.

So how do you get all parties agreeing that change is important and everyone needs to work together to adapt?

The best way to tackle this in a team building exercise is to throw ‘curve balls’ that they wouldn’t expect.

Teams will get to experience situations where rules, time frames, environments and people change, requiring them to adapt to be successful or just reach the finish line.

Survivor, Art In A Day and Risk Reward are great team building programs where adapting to change is a necessity to complete the challenges.